Former secretary of state, senator and first lady Hillary Clinton has announced her long-awaited 2016 presidential campaign. With the race for the presidency now truly underway, our panel of experts unpack what Clinton’s announcement really means. Read more

The NGO, Aids Free World, has released a copy of a report on sexual violations committed by UN peacekeeping personnel.

The UN’s opaque nature means that rather than address the points made by the independent experts, the report was not circulated – but copies of it were leaked to Aids Free World, which sent it to the ambassadors and permanent representatives of every UN member state. Read more

The verdict has been returned on the first prosecution for female genital mutilation in England and Wales – and the defendant has been found not guilty. This is a damning indictment for the Crown Prosecution Service, for our police forces – and for our society. A jury took less than half an hour to find Dr Dhanuson Dharmasena not guilty of FGM, and rightly so.

The FGM legislation is not aimed at doctors who treat previously mutilated women during and after childbirth. It is aimed at the practitioners of FGM who perform the initial mutilation of girls and women and at the parents who seek out, collude in and enable this grievous bodily harm to take place. Read more

January 12 2015 marks five years since Haiti was hit by a devastating earthquake. Countless victims were killed, homes destroyed, and vital infrastructure reduced to debris.

Already one of the world’s poorest and most fragile countries, Haiti was particularly vulnerable to the effects of a major natural disaster. But perhaps the most deadly and destructive event that year was the introduction of cholera into Haiti for the first time in over a century. Read more

The use of unpaid internships in the human rights sector has ballooned in recent years. While human rights bodies have employed interns in a general work experience capacity for decades, the last few years have seen an upsurge in the use of interns to support the work of human rights actors, including UN human rights experts and monitoring bodies. Read more

“Recent reports have indicated that the Home Office has enjoyed access to the NHS records of more than 6,900 people since 2010, and used information from them for ramped-up efforts to track down illegal migrants.

While data protection laws protect medical records from most types of scrutiny, a largely overlooked exemption has allowed the government to directly access patients’ non-clinical records. No court order is required for this access.”

“On 20th March 2014 the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) attempted to hold a minute of silence in the UN Human Rights Council’s chamber in memory of Cao Shunli. Ms Cao was arrested on 14th September 2013 as she attempted to board a flight to Geneva. A human rights defender in China, Ms Cao was en route to the Human Rights Council to attend the September session. China’s authorities detained Ms Cao for 5 months and during that time failed to provide her with access to proper medical care…”

“The United Nations Human Rights Council is tasked with the universal protection and promotion of human rights, and is the UN’s principal human rights body. Yet it is being used by known rights abusers to produce “soft law” that allows them to erode fundamental rights.”

The Freedom Rights Project is proud to welcome Dr. Rosa Freedman, Senior Lecturer at the University of Birmingham, who will join the founders as a Principal Investigator. Dr. Freedman brings with her significant expertise in international human rights law and intimate knowledge of the workings of the UN Human Rights Council.